Various Artists - Ghostbusters Soundtrack
I honestly had to write this Quick Hit entry, right in the middle of ACL prep, because of how freaking awful the soundtrack for the new Ghostbusters movie is. I saw it sitting in the new music list on Spotify and figured I'd give it a try, and son of a bitch, it sucks so damn bad.
You've got three different versions of the iconic Ghostbusters theme - the original by Roy Parker Jr, by the "Shut Up and Dance With Me" people, and then by the Glee-teabagging mmmmbop lovers Pentatonix. Now I hate the original. Then you've got these super crappy songs that take the flavor of that song and try to spice it up with a current hip element, like the garbage from ZAYN called "wHo" (as in, wHo you gonna call, which he probably sings 3 billion times in a 3 minute song), or "Ghostbusters (I'm not Afraid)" from Fall Out Boy, Mark Ronson's "Get Ghost" that just chops up the sound of the original in a funky falsetto fart, or G-Eazy's "Saw It Coming," which includes a hook that shockingly asks "who you gonna call" and also includes the line "what's a ghost to a shotgun?" I have a guilty pleasure thing going with Fall Out Boy, but this is garbage and you must suffer through it now.
- the Wolf Alice song is typically a good tune and it doesn't sound like they wrote the track solely to get on the soundtrack.
- Strangely enough, I think the 5 Seconds of Summer song may be pretty good.
- Inexplicably, the end of the album has DMX's "Party Up (Up in Here)" and DeBarge's "Rhythm of the Night," both of which remain classics. Although it is weird that the Ghostbuster soundtrack artwork doesn't appear for those two songs.
Additional negatives of the album:
- I'd like to enjoy the verses from A$AP Ferg and Missy Elliott on their respective cameo songs, but nope. Cashing checks.
- I recall listening to the Muddy Magnolias for last year's ACL review, and they haven't improved in the year since. "RECOGNIZE A REAL ASS WOMAN!"
DJ Snake and Yellow Claw - Ocho Cinco. I also know that I normally don't write about singles in this space, but I tossed this one into the Q a while back to check out, mainly because I think the title of the song is funny. However, this song sucks. I'm sure its lovely to freak out to at a huge concert and all that, but to try to listen to it at your desk and not want to immediately die is a herculean effort. All middle Eastern influenced drops and freakouts. Don't listen to this song.
Various Artists - Day of the Dead.
Do you remember Deadicated? I thought that album was super rad when I was in high school. My sister was a relatively dedicated Deadhead, and had sent me a tape or two of her favorite tracks from albums and bootlegs. I wouldn't say I was deep into the Dead by this point (or ever, honestly) but by this time I owned Skeletons in the Closet and In the Dark and was starting to realize that some of their good songs crossed genres in a perfect way for my musical tastes at the time. Well then Deadicated came out, and I was hooked. Midnight Oil, Jane's Addiction, and Indigo Girls? Those were heavy duty touchstone bands for me in the early nineties. I was all about that aboriginal rights shit from Midnight Oil, yo. And I knew most of the other bands as well, Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam, Suzanne Vega, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, etc. Lyle's version of "Friend of the Devil" and Jane's version of "Ripple" are still both excellent. Since then my sister turned me on to Europe '72 and then I've wandered around to the greatness of American Beauty and Workingman's Dead. I enjoy the Dead, but I'm no superfan.
So, I was a little skeptical when I saw that the guys from The National had copied the blueprint for Deadicated, and multiplied it dramatically, for a new Dead tribute album(s). Day of the Dead is a Who's Who of current hip indie kids, from The National themselves, to Jim James, the War on Drugs, Courtney Barnett, Kurt Vile, Jenny Lewis, up to larger folks like Mumford, Wilco, and Lucinda Williams.
Skepticism be damned, most of this is really good. Some is a great meld, like the opening track, which sounds so exactly like other War on Drugs songs, while also sounding very much like the original "Touch of Grey." Same with Unknown Mortal Orchestra's "Shakedown Street," which is amazing. I think Stephen Malkmus does a good job on "China Cat Sunflower" as well. Some are a little clunky or boring, like Marijuana Deathsquads' version of "Truckin'" (which sucks), Mumford's version of "Friend of the Devil" (and I love that song), Angel Olsen's version of "Attics of My Life," or ANOHNI's version of "Black Peter." But others fit nicely and sound really good, like Courtney Barnett's version of "New Speedway Boogie," or Lucius doing "Uncle John's Band." Even the 16 minute long "Terrapin Station" suite got me grooving pretty well, although I've never heard of the 48 people listed as the artists on the track. I like that Bruce Horsnby made the cut both for Deadicated and for this album, his voice still sounds damn smooth.
But the standout track, the one I'm going to play for you, is the one that made me stop what I was doing and turn up the tunes to check it out. Charles Bradley is cool as shit in his own right, but his version of "Cumberland Blues" is tight and menacing and funky. Get some.
"gotta get down!" That is choice stuff. So after surviving the full 837 hours of this tribute "album," I think that I would keep a few tracks and continue to play those, but the majority of this behemoth can fade back into the background for the rest of time.
SWMRS - Drive North. Love it. You've maybe heard of the band because the drummer has a famous dad (Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day), but the band is making good music even without the famous reference. A little reminiscent of Green Day, but also a little more modern and indie sounding, like FIDLAR, but with that pop-punk sensibility and some harmonies. And now I read that a dude from FIDLAR produced this album, so I'm just the darn smartest guy in the world. This music isn't breaking boundaries, but its damn fun. Here is the top single, "Figuring It Out," which has 1.4 million streams.
Also great, the title track for this album, an ode to how much the singer hates L.A. Get some of this pop punk action. Keeping this stuff.
Bassnectar - Unlimited. Here's the thing. If you've read enough of my blog posts, you know that I have trouble figuring out the insane popularity of the electronic music scene. However, I don't need any convincing with this guy. I'm sure there is a proper name for the bass-heavy style of these tunes (Spotify says "extreme bass," which seems like a dumb ass moniker to me, but whatever, maybe that is right), but this just does it for me so much better than Kygo or the Chainsmokers. I think the attraction to me is that this sounds like some future rap stuff, chopping up video game noises and bass and samples, just without the rappers coming in and mucking it up with some idiotic lyrics about cars and chains, so it is just something kick ass to bounce along to. He also does fun and weird stuff in his drops - its not just thump thump thump - like the queasy, clicky, smeary drop in "Shampion Chip," which just made me look up from my work and grin and kind of go - "woah." The top song for plays is "Reaching Out," the album opener, with 2.4 million, but I'm going to go with the more traditional banger, "TKO," which has 1.5 million.
That video is freaky - you can move the camera around and look at different things going on throughout. But you get a flavor for what this sounds like. Actually, I'm going to include another, which is the one that I first heard off of this album and made me want to hear the rest, because I think it is pretty sweet too. This is "Unlimited Combinations."
Like a space lullaby ride on a rainbow that gets interrupted by a launch directly into a space race in an old school Nintendo game. Then, YouTube stared playing another song from this album, "Zodgilla," and I found myself bouncing around in my seat all over again. This guy may have a cringy affinity for pun-filled song names, but he brings the good stuff.
Do you remember Deadicated? I thought that album was super rad when I was in high school. My sister was a relatively dedicated Deadhead, and had sent me a tape or two of her favorite tracks from albums and bootlegs. I wouldn't say I was deep into the Dead by this point (or ever, honestly) but by this time I owned Skeletons in the Closet and In the Dark and was starting to realize that some of their good songs crossed genres in a perfect way for my musical tastes at the time. Well then Deadicated came out, and I was hooked. Midnight Oil, Jane's Addiction, and Indigo Girls? Those were heavy duty touchstone bands for me in the early nineties. I was all about that aboriginal rights shit from Midnight Oil, yo. And I knew most of the other bands as well, Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam, Suzanne Vega, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, etc. Lyle's version of "Friend of the Devil" and Jane's version of "Ripple" are still both excellent. Since then my sister turned me on to Europe '72 and then I've wandered around to the greatness of American Beauty and Workingman's Dead. I enjoy the Dead, but I'm no superfan.
So, I was a little skeptical when I saw that the guys from The National had copied the blueprint for Deadicated, and multiplied it dramatically, for a new Dead tribute album(s). Day of the Dead is a Who's Who of current hip indie kids, from The National themselves, to Jim James, the War on Drugs, Courtney Barnett, Kurt Vile, Jenny Lewis, up to larger folks like Mumford, Wilco, and Lucinda Williams.
Skepticism be damned, most of this is really good. Some is a great meld, like the opening track, which sounds so exactly like other War on Drugs songs, while also sounding very much like the original "Touch of Grey." Same with Unknown Mortal Orchestra's "Shakedown Street," which is amazing. I think Stephen Malkmus does a good job on "China Cat Sunflower" as well. Some are a little clunky or boring, like Marijuana Deathsquads' version of "Truckin'" (which sucks), Mumford's version of "Friend of the Devil" (and I love that song), Angel Olsen's version of "Attics of My Life," or ANOHNI's version of "Black Peter." But others fit nicely and sound really good, like Courtney Barnett's version of "New Speedway Boogie," or Lucius doing "Uncle John's Band." Even the 16 minute long "Terrapin Station" suite got me grooving pretty well, although I've never heard of the 48 people listed as the artists on the track. I like that Bruce Horsnby made the cut both for Deadicated and for this album, his voice still sounds damn smooth.
But the standout track, the one I'm going to play for you, is the one that made me stop what I was doing and turn up the tunes to check it out. Charles Bradley is cool as shit in his own right, but his version of "Cumberland Blues" is tight and menacing and funky. Get some.
SWMRS - Drive North. Love it. You've maybe heard of the band because the drummer has a famous dad (Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day), but the band is making good music even without the famous reference. A little reminiscent of Green Day, but also a little more modern and indie sounding, like FIDLAR, but with that pop-punk sensibility and some harmonies. And now I read that a dude from FIDLAR produced this album, so I'm just the darn smartest guy in the world. This music isn't breaking boundaries, but its damn fun. Here is the top single, "Figuring It Out," which has 1.4 million streams.
Bassnectar - Unlimited. Here's the thing. If you've read enough of my blog posts, you know that I have trouble figuring out the insane popularity of the electronic music scene. However, I don't need any convincing with this guy. I'm sure there is a proper name for the bass-heavy style of these tunes (Spotify says "extreme bass," which seems like a dumb ass moniker to me, but whatever, maybe that is right), but this just does it for me so much better than Kygo or the Chainsmokers. I think the attraction to me is that this sounds like some future rap stuff, chopping up video game noises and bass and samples, just without the rappers coming in and mucking it up with some idiotic lyrics about cars and chains, so it is just something kick ass to bounce along to. He also does fun and weird stuff in his drops - its not just thump thump thump - like the queasy, clicky, smeary drop in "Shampion Chip," which just made me look up from my work and grin and kind of go - "woah." The top song for plays is "Reaching Out," the album opener, with 2.4 million, but I'm going to go with the more traditional banger, "TKO," which has 1.5 million.
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